Void sim $50 tier increase

There's more to them. Especially the space station.

Probably you are not considering the fact that a Simulator is not a "machine", it is a virtual machine, i can edit the config file (server side) and type max_prims=15000 on any OS and transform it instantly into an "apparently" regular SIM without touching anything else.
So your comment about using the hardware and related costs is pointless, there's no real cost involved here unless you are a customer that is asked to pay for it. So "transforming" a OS into a regular SIM does costs NOTHING to LL (you can squize more than 16 simulators on a single server, forcing it, if you know from the start the usage destination of these simulators; make em OS or Regular Region does cost NOTHING to Linden Lab, *until* you really use more resources, but this is not the case, since the resources used remained the same), while it costs (a lot of) money to us. Sorry about my english, i probably wasn't clear at the start.

Also, the fact that they were build normal constructions on these OS (with "normal" i mean living spaces, aimed to be "lived" by users, and not surrounding landscapes like open oceans or forests) demostrate that a rule didn't exisisted from the start (neither for them), so they invented it today (and they were so "smart" to not consider the fact that they were outside of this new rules!) to make more money, as soon they have been caught by the customers they hurried to transform these regions into regular sim (at zero costs) but asked anyone else to pay more.

I do not buy the explanation about OS abuse that LL is putting forth. They knowingly created the current situation. They knew exactly what would happen when they changed the rules about the quad purchase, upped the prim count and the connection rules.

They did this to create a new business opportunity for Estate owners and the land market in general. Most importantly, they knew it would increase cash flow into their pockets. They just didn't realize how successful it would be. Now, they have decided they want a bigger slice of the pie. They think that they under priced the product and that the demand will support the price increase.

Well, Jack, if you had known and understood your business in the first place, this would not have happened. What makes you think you understand it now?

This "correction" you are trying to make will not work. It's too late. Stop trying to manage LL from the bottom line of an Excel spreadsheet and find out what is really going on in you business and how it works.

The tier increase of 67% will not be withdrawn, LL knew upfront that the community would protest, but they could not care less. Actualy they probably hope that as many voids will be abandonned, 250 free dollars per void = 4000 dollars per server paid as setup fee. How much easier can you do a fundraise for new hardware?

In the Linden topic I already posted that this nothing more then a big con. They made it as interesting as they possibly could to buy voids, and they knew damn well what they were used for. Only when enough Estate owners purchased voids, they decided to milk that cash cow.

Jack can twist any way he likes, but it is a swindle and a big one too. Any sensible person saw the explosion in sales of open sims coming, and any sensible person saw how they were used. If that really was a problem, they would have put a hold on the sale of voids, investigate, and come with a solution. But no, they had my estate owner pay $100 to convert a sim to voids, only a day before this decision went public. How much clearer can a scam be?

Apart from the fact that I miss out on a lot of revenue, no too much harm is done to me personally. I moved to my own void, and moved out 2 days after. My Estate managers did everything to provide me with a solution, and however I am sad (I was so looking forward to my own sim), I can live with it. But I do feel conned, and lots any trust I had in LL. Where I usually defend them in discussions, this time I am done with them. Second Life may be a revolutionary platform, but the company providing us with that platform is the poorest excuse for a business I ever saw.

Anyway, in my country I guess this would never hold up in court. Sell a product wth a maintenance fee per month, and then suddenly up the maintenance with 67%? No freaking way. At least not without offering your initial purchase price back.

Well, if its really a Scam, then I would recoomend to sue LL. There are threads about exactly that, going to take legal actions against LL and so on. Somone already got thorugh with it, read the Wiki about the guy that more or less won against LL. What he could do, we can do too.

Almost one in two private sims is an openspace, or about 13,000 of them.

If everyone abandons those then they have about 810 "free" servers they could resell as private sims for $3.2 million although they loose out on $16,200/month in recurring income ($295/sim vs $300/4 openspaces). Additionally they loose out on 2-3 months of revenue (810 servers, or 3240 full sims would take about 2 months to sell and first month's tier is included). So that's a loss of anywhere in between $1.9-$2.8 million.

All in all they'd get a one time "profit" of somewhere between $0.4-$1.3 million if they're hoping everyone abandons.

Now if everyone keeps their openspace and pays an additional $50/month their revenue increases about $650,000/month, or $7.8 million extra throughout 2009.

If you want to make a bet, I'll place mine on the fact that they're hoping that the overwhelming majority of people will whine but will end up paying anyway.

Actually, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Linden Lab had no clue what was going to happen when they made the original changes to the openspace sims. This decision wasn't from the techs, the g-team, nor the regular support teams who deal with the users.. this was the financial team's decision for the original changes.

Now fast forward to now: The tech team's going crazy dealing with the hardware, trying to keep up with the new demand, while the support team is dealing with the glitches caused by the overuse of the openspace sims. They've probably told the rest of LL that something needs to give, because they simply can't keep up. Since this was the financial team's fault, they probably got told to fix it... which might be why this happened.

LL is on record for not having much foresight when it comes to how the user base uses their system. Heck, they didn't have the tools in place to deal with 06/06/06, because they didn't know what they'd need!

And for those doing the math, think of this.. some of those openspace sims are still on class 4 servers. LL has plans to change those over to class 5 sims when they increase the price. So, LL has probably already taken into account that most people will simply drop the openspace sims rather than pay. This means that they probably won't have to order as much hardware to do the upgrades...

Edit: I realized that I just gave them too much credit for accountability within their company... so maybe I'm completely wrong.

Do you have any evidence that they did this? They have stated specifically in the past how they deploy simulators on hardware. 4 sims per box, or 16 openspace sims per box (or whatever it is - the specifics are irrelevant). Perhaps they mix and match, but unless they are breaking their own "policy" here, they are dedicating potentially money generating resources to making the sim a full one. Again, unless you can prove otherwise.





Only if you can prove your assumption.

Residents have always wanted space and privacy, as much if not more than prims. Once you have enough prims for a nice house, creating a buffer (both visual and social) from the hurly-burly of strangers is a top priority.

LL has never understood the depths of this yearning, and never done anything to provide it on the mainland. The managed estates were step up by providing at least attractively styled crowding, but it was still crowding nonetheless and no true privacy.

Open Space sims, as reformed by recent policy changes, finally answered a deep need: affordable privacy for living. How ironic that LL never intended them for this purpose and only accidentally filled the need.

Now they're reaping the blowback of taking away residents' fulfilled desire, and leaving them nothing in return, no other option.

I've been constantly amazed by this since I found SL. The land is virtual. There's no practical "real world" limitation (other than entrenched poor design) to virtual space (prims, textures, scripts, yes, but expanse? no). That Linden Lab has managed to turn it into a commodity which people will pay "big money" for continually amazes me. In some ways, I'm in awe. In other ways, I'm disgusted.

But mostly amazed. That people stand for it. They accept it as natural. I guess the RL analogy makes that natural to do. But ... wow.

OK I really don't get something here.

There is the allocated prim allowance of 3,750.

You aren't supposed to build or live on these sims.

If you use 3,750 prims correctly without any temp rez shannagans does this count as building?

If you have a sim which just as 3,750 of trees and landscaping, and you are a naturist who needs no house but you log in there to change your clothes or stand about alone in a ton of IMs, is that "living" there?

I've got a house on my Openspace, which works just fine. I've also got well over 2,000 prims spare. Apart from my house, most of the prettiness is actually made by water and land-sculpting.

The record number of people on the sim at any one time has been three people.

Does that make me an evil abuser who is making others pay for my sins? I doubt it, but I am "misusing" my sim by regarding the place as my home ...

I think the issue is more about scripts and textures than prims, per se. It's just that as builds get more complex, all three can increase.

Really though, I think the argument is at least partially misdirection and lame excuse. I tend to believe that their infrastructure is being taxed (just use it and you get that impression), but it's due to actual use by customers, not open spaces, per se.

What does seem true is that a script heavy openspace will impact up to three other openspaces. And none of the changes listed (other than a vague thread/promise) address that.

I asked that myself, because I haven't had a house in SL since my carefully modified Wright House got returned in a thousand separate prims (this was before they coalesced objects on returns), and my own builds that I quote-live-unquote in *are* a scenic wooded area and an open area for boating (as Linden Labs suggested OpenSpace sims would be for... no, they're not on OS sims, one's on the mainland and one's in a dAlliez sim).

Philosophically, the question of "what does it mean to live in a place in Second Life" is kind of interesting.

Perhaps they wouldn't have had so much of a problem if they'd created a "skybox zone".

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-2390

Hmmm well I've just paid a month's tier on my rented Openspace. I don't regret helping out my Estate owner she's great.

However if I wasn't so keen to cover her back then I'm not sure I would have now that the implications are setting in. I guess if she has to raise her tier I will have to let go of my place.

I love having a private space, I truly did. I loved setting up a sim name which is innocent to the world but full of hidden meaning for me and my baby. Well ... he said to me once that he'd be happy living in a cardboard box so long as he was with me ... maybe a little reduced circumstances back on mainland will be in order. Or maybe I just don't care any more and we'll - gasp - both be BASIC ACCOUNTS WITH NOT EVEN ANY PREMIUM FEES.

It's very tempting.

I think we are in the eyes of LL .

Jack asked (paraphrased) "If we limit them to 1500 prims and a maximum of 250 scripts and kept the pricing the same, would that be good for all of you?" (which is a far worse deal than even class 4 openspace).

Maybe LL originally naively just expected openspaces to be "easy money". Just a bunch of sims that are empty and sit around doing absolutely nothing 99.9% of the time yet nets the same as full sims per server.

Then they finally realized that people are *gasp* actually using them and they're scrambling to find some new "easy money".

That's fine, but the problem isn't their upgrading, it's the fact that they were using openspaces for such applications at all, when they've been adamant from the beginning that they were supposed to be used as countryside or ocean.

I do agree that it's a case of stovepipe organization, though; had there been any communication, those sims would've been upgraded long before the official price change was announced under the pretext of a complaint about openspace abuse.

According to Jack the ratio of "resource usage" is 2-to-1 for openspaces vs full sims instead of the 4-to-1. So alledgedly each CPU is struggling to handle the equivalent of 2 full sims and the equivalent of 8 full sims per server.

The problem really can't be bandwidth though. An openspace sim will have about 1/4 less textures and prims and object updates in your draw distance than a full sim would so as far as bandwidth usage is concerned for people who are on openspace sims they should be more efficient than a full sim.

Which just leaves resource usage... even if I believed Jack's 2-to-1 number... unless they're compensating by scaling everything down to only run 8 openspaces per server I just don't see where there would be an extra cost.

There are people who use the system and people who abuse the system. All have to accommodate the ones that abuse it. A crude analogy: people who ride the city bus still have to pay city taxes to help pay for the roads that all the other people who drive use. Granted, the bus riders use the same streets; they just use those streets much more efficiently. Not so fair, eh, to have all citizens pay the same tax for the same streets, when some use them better/worse than others?

In Arizona, the revenue from car registrations is used to upkeep the streets, making it a little more fair to those who only use the bus, since they don't have to pay car registration.

Why doesn't LL charge in the same way... a "usage" fee, I guess? If you have a bunch of scripts and a bunch of prims and a bunch of avatars on your OS sim, you should pay a surcharge. Rather than doubling the $75/month, LL could charge a "CPU cycle" (Or whatever, I don't know the terminology) to ALL OS owners. If you don't go over a certain amount of scripts/prims/etc, you pay the minimal $75. Anything over that, and you get charged extra. I understand that this would require some sort of accounting system to be implemented by LL, but it sure as heck would help in the long run.

Wonder how "Lovely" is doing these days? LOL.

(This is a joke, folks)

LMAO I have read every post in here and im just laughing so hard on this.
i feel bad for the openspace sim owners but they just as much at fault for this as the users of the sims.
first they were meant for light traffic only was said over and over and was ignored and taken advantage of. sim owners are renting them out to people that intend to build this great looking sim with rentals and castle and this and that.they useing temp rezzers cause they have too much land and no prims and then they get all mad cause its laggy.
they weren't meant to be rental unit sims for a busniess they were meant for sencery and beauty and i see people saying why would someone want that. well some of us in sl like that and we like boating,fly or what ever and being about to go from sim to sim with out being on the laggy mainland.
i can say one thing. i bet the 3 1/4 pieces of land i have will go up in value now because this helps because all the openspace renters will be looking for new land. and i love it

Just as Jack's "arena hour" got to him explaining that pinning sims to CPUs (so, for example, all OpenSpaces on a core might belong to the same owner) wouldn't work with LL's "grid contingency" operations (or something like that), I did something stupid to crash my viewer.

I kinda wanted to follow-up on that thought, though. I don't know all the "contingency" stuff that requires dynamic reassignment of sims. I guess if there's an available warm standby to which a down sim can fail-over, that would reduce downtime. And I'm sure Operations has a bunch of scripts to automate all that. But I don't know what else I'm missing.

I'm thinking that a virtue of same-owner shared core (in addition to putting the inter-sim resource contention squarely under the control of that one owner) would be less network traffic. It wouldn't help with access to back-end services, but neighboring sims communicate with each other, and OpenSpaces of the same owner are a lot more likely to be neighboring than just random chance, so... wouldn't that keep a lot of communications local to the IP stack, never even hitting the NIC (let alone that shiny new fiber they've got planned)?

So I take it that if the price of the land you own suddenly went up by two-thirds because somebody somewhere on the grid was running, say, too-heavy physics, you'd laugh and blame yourself?

I think what they're trying to avoid is a single server failure taking out multiple sims in an area - a "trip over the power cord = all Caledon goes poof" sorta thing.


AFAIK, sims on the same host don't really share resources. Probably because they really don't get any gain from it, since their location on the hardware has nothing to do with their location on the grid..

/me watches the developments around this with interest. Could be a big performance improvement but the risk is a lot higher when things go bad. It'll be interesting to see what they do..

Really? Where was it said over and over? It certainly wasn't mentioned in the July blog post that enthused greatly about Openspaces and how much extra land was on the grid. Even when they were voids they were being rented out, the change in product lent itself to them being rented out and there's no way, not a chance in hell, that Linden Lab didn't know that the explosion in growth was for rentals.